Well, that was rather more clever and lead me to believe that either Clinton himself was a pretty good lawyer before he left it for politics or at least had some damn good lawyers on his team.
The thing there was that it was the terms of reference of the inquiry that defined ‘sex’ for the purposes of the enquiry. Classic Sir Humphrey-ism. Define the subject of the inquiry in such a way as to exclude everything you actually did.
That way you can safely and honestly say to the enquiry “I did not have sex with that woman”
Q: Mr. President, if there is a semen stain belonging to you on a dress of Ms. Lewinsky’s, how would you explain that?
PRESIDENT CLINTON: Well, Mr. Bittman, I, I don’t – first of all, when you asked me for a blood test, I gave you one promptly. You came over here and got it. That’s – we met that night and talked. So, that’s a question you already know the answer to. Not if, but you know whether.
And the main thing I can tell you is that doesn’t affect the opening statement I made. The opening statement I made is that I had inappropriate intimate contact. I take full responsibility for it. It wasn’t her fault, it was mine. I do not believe that I violated the definition of sexual relations I was given by directly touching those parts of her body with the intent to arouse or gratify. And that’s all I have to say. I think, for the rest, you know, you know what the evidence is and it doesn’t affect that statement.
Hegemonic masculinity, or the dominant form that relies on men positioning themselves as above and opposite to femininity or other forms of masculinity does not have a feminine equivalent.
My logic is this: you show no respect for nuance and that’s a tyranny.
Odds are that part of you that rushes to conclusions which can be resolved only through the presentation of a false dichotomy to another person - is not serving you or conversation, well, at all.
To return the favor (but I don’t mean it at all, it’s exclusively rhetorical, for an example of the same) - did you come here to talk about septic masculinity, or be an object example of it via muddying the waters, casting aspersions, and generally rubbing ones own metaphorical testacles on things and ideas you cannot tolerate?
It is always about the extreme. Racism and sexism advance most easily when the attacked minority is ridiculed and extremes are an easier target.
“White” was indeed an error of mine. When I redacted the answer, I had a demonstration where I replaced men by black men to show the parallel with racism, but decided to drop it. I forgot to edit out “white” in that sentence.
The average cis white man is not an attacked minority, neither in this thread nor in western societies in general. They’re instead the opposite – the hegemonically dominant.
